People living on a street in Merseyside said their lives are being made "a misery" by constant fly-tipping behind their homes.
The entry behind Gaskell Street in St Helens has become known as a problem area for fly-tipping. In February of last year the ECHO reported how residents had started to fear rats invading their homes after the alleyway was filled with waste, including a toilet.
One person said: "[The] house boundaries have become tracks for rats, and it won't be before long before they're in the house."
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According to residents living in housing backing onto the entry, fly-tipping is a constant problem. One resident told the ECHO: "It’s a regular occurrence, every few months the council will get rid of it and then it creeps back."
While another said their lives are being "made a misery" by the waste being dumped. They said: "It is happening regularly, you try to look after your home and then this just keeps happening. It's making our lives a misery here and we're sick of it."
A mattress can be seen among the dumped rubbish. Figures show waste is dumped four times an hour across Merseyside, with St Helens seeing 2,060 incidents across 2020/21.
Fly-tipping has been a hot topic across the town in local months, with several cases reported recently, and the ECHO covering a number of shocking cases. The entry, behind the busy road of Gaskell Street, in Parr, can be seen to have bags of waste thrown everywhere, and even had a toilet dumped among the black bags in recent months.
There were also 1,010 fixed penalty notices handed out in 2020/21 - down from 1,878 - although only 22 were subsequently paid (up from none) - The amount of money collected through FPNs is unavailable.
A spokesperson for St Helens Borough Council confirmed that the latest waste had been cleared as of February 10.
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